As a Reader

Was at Costa (it's this little chain cafe in the UK) earlier and watching a little girl read her book by the window seat. Made me think of how I used to get so engrossed in a book that I'd feel like I was in another world.

It doesn't happen anymore though. I wonder if it's because I've gotten impatient, or if every story seems to be a repeat of another. I want to say it's because I haven't got time, but it seems too easy an excuse. I find myself making little side notes of the writer's technique, musing over the subtle clues and insights to life, and then skimming through the rest of the book after 'Preface'.

I wonder if it makes me any lesser as Writer when I don't do Reader right.

I'm very comfortable with my style of writing. It's a descriptive sort of prose, more of emotion than of places and sounds and sights, more metaphor than surface value. I like it, love it, enjoy writing and reading this particular style, but I'm beginning to find it very limiting. I'd like to try out simple, factual, teasing writing that doesn't hint at earth-shattering epiphanies. I'd like to try out simple sentences, without commas, each five words long. I need a new angle. Something really new. And fresh.

Hm. Looks like I've just found what I can do. 

In terms of my writing, I am currently in this search for precise words. Words that don't just give a glimpse of what I mean, but are what I mean. Phrases pieced together for both their beauty and political correctness. In short, I am becoming like all the other Literature-ists who become too critical of language, who cut the language apart and seem to overlook the very banal perspective that language can be, above all, merely a language.

See? I'm even finding trouble with that last sentence. Bah.

Right now. In a nutshell.

Grief

I tell you, hopeless grief is passionless;
That only men incredulous of despair,
Half-taught in anguish, through the midnight air
Beat upwards to God’s throne in loud access
Of shrieking and reproach. Full desertness
In souls, as countries, lieth silent-bare
Under the blanching, vertical eye-glare
Of the absolute Heavens. Deep-hearted man, express
Grief for thy Dead in silence like to death:
Most like a monumnetal statue set
In everlasting watch and moveless woe,
Till itself crumble to the dust beneath.
Touch it: the marble eyelids are not wet;
If it could weep, it could arise and go.


Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

TC

Do not underestimate what it means to take care of yourself.

It is the hardest, most tiresome, thing to do. It is the most adult thing you can do. It is your most precious commodity. It is your best investment.

Derek Walcott

From What the Twilight Says by Derek Walcott:

' ... the manic absurdity would be to give up thought because it is white.'

' ... colonial literatures could grow to resemble [English Literature] closely but could never be considered its legitimate heir.'

'All their betrayals are quarrels with the self, their pardonable desertions the inevitable problem of all island artists: the choice of home or exile, self-realization or spiritual betrayal of one's country.'

'The language of the torturer mastered by the victim. This is viewed as servitude, not as victory.'

Without Stress (?)

Came across an article entitled: 'How to Live a Life Without Stress', which I think is complete bull. You have to have stress, you need to be consistently (albeit not continuously) stressed. As humans, we are walking defects with egoes the size of God's thumb (Form 4 Lit students, ring a bell?), and if we're not stressed every now and again, beaten down and cracked open every once in a while, we're bound to end up like: a) inflated balloons, and getting bored of the air, or b) depressed and sad and hating the sunlight because the boredom will eat us whole.

In a way, life is only about escaping boredom. It's not about surviving, not even to 'survive' in this competitive, economically-driven world, because we're just fine, thank you very much, living off cheap bread and working at Tesco's. Having great interest in buying another loaf of Gardenia, however, is another matter.

The purpose of life is a life of purpose.
- Robert Byrne -

Spook

Think I'm spooking myself out.

Are Gore writers sick?

I'm cracking myself up.

WRITE

I don't know if it's the course. Maybe English Literature disentangles you in such a way that you'd never be able to step back and read without analysing and deciphering and taking apart.

Haven't written in nearly three weeks. Everything I write is bullshit. Nothing is new. Nothing is inspiring. Nothing makes me want to write more. And it's all the same stuff, thrown out over and again, phrased differently, phrased more badly, and I'm searching for this string of words to 'punchline' it out, but nothing's fucking working.

It could be that I'm just PMS-ing.